What if Sweet Mama’s escapade with the plastic roses was not a sign of senility but a sign that the sassy, unsinkable Lucy Long Blake of years gone by was still shining through? What if she were made of such strong stuff she could defeat all the alarming signs of a mind and a body roaring toward old age?
“Let’s go inside so you can eat, Sweet Mama. Then I’ll drive you to the café. We’ve got a wedding to plan.”
“I don’t want to ride with you.”
“Why not?”
“You drive like a bat out of hell.”
It was true. Was it because Sis was in love with speed or was she thumbing her nose at fate, saying I cheated you once, see if you can catch me now?
“All right. We’ll go in separate cars. But you be careful, you hear?”
“Pshaw” was all Sweet Mama said.
Sis took her arm and led her up the back steps that might be a grandmother trap. Beulah was in the kitchen waiting for them.
“It’s about time ya’ll come in from the garden,” she said. “Breakfast is getting cold.”
“You and Sweet Mama go ahead and eat. I’ve got a few more things to do in the garden.”
“Not without something in your stomach, you don’t.” Beulah slapped two pieces of bacon between a biscuit and handed them to Sis as she headed back to the garden.
Sis decided to leave the plastic roses for a while. By tomorrow, Sweet Mama would have forgotten all about them, and Sis could remove them without causing a fuss. The rose hedge itself was another matter. She could fertilize and water a few of the bushes and hope for a little bit of greenery in time for the wedding, but most of them had to be dug up. She’d plant new ones tomorrow.
She went into the double garage where Jim’s baby-blue Thunderbird was parked, and the fishing boat Sis hadn’t used all summer. Thinking that fishing might be just the thing for her brother, she found her spade, then went back to the rose hedge and started to dig.
In spite of spindly growth with only a few blighted leaves, the rosebush had roots that seemed to go all the way to China. Sweat darkened her shirt and poured down her face as the mound of earth piled up.
Suddenly, her spade struck something hard. It was probably part of a brick or an old Mason jar. These old houses had yards full of junk tossed out and buried under years of accumulated dirt. Dropping to her knees, Sis leaned close to investigate, using her hands to carefully rake away the earth.
The bleached bones came suddenly into view, and Sis felt her breath leave her body. She bent closer to inspect her find. The bones didn’t look like much at first, maybe the carcass of a dead squirrel. Or something larger. A dog, perhaps. A family pet.
That was the answer, of course. On a day when the sky looked as if angels had polished it with lemon wax, what could possibly be awry in Sweet Mama’s garden?
Sis continued to dig, but as the mound of dirt collected at her feet and her discovery under the rosebushes revealed its true nature, she sank back on her heels, her heart hammering so loud it was a wonder they didn’t hear it clear in the kitchen. That was no family pet under the roses. It was a skeletal foot, pointing straight toward disaster. She felt as if everything tethering her to earth had been cut away and she was tumbling headlong into that dark hole with the bleached bones. Questions spun through her mind with the dizzying speed of a comet. Who? Why? And how?
But the one that burned a hole through her was What do these bones have to do with my family?
The sun had already climbed into a hot blue sky and beat unmercifully on her and her eerie find, the toe bones attached to the foot, the foot attached to the ankle. And what else? If she kept digging would she find the entire body?
She poked gingerly with her spade, each thrust meeting a sickening resistance that told its own story. The weight of sudden fear dropped her to her knees, but no matter how hard she stared at the awful thing in the hole, no matter how hard she wished she’d never taken her shovel to the roses, the bones wouldn’t go away. Bleached whiter than the wings of angels, they grew so big in Sis’s mind they took up all her oxygen, deprived her of breath and speech and hope. They grew so big she felt as if they were splitting the earth beneath her feet. Any minute now it would open up and swallow her whole, and along with her, everything she loved.
Slowly, Sis pushed herself upright. The woman who had come blithely into the garden expecting to tidy up for her sister’s wedding had suddenly become a woman whose awful discovery could destroy her family. Nothing would ever be the same. From this day on she would divide her life into two parts: before she found the bones and after.
The proper thing would be to tell the authorities, but then they’d have yellow crime scene tape all over the backyard during the wedding, reporters hounding their steps, gossips leaning on every fence post in Biloxi, speculating on the gruesome discovery in the Blake’s backyard. The scandal would be worse than when Emily got pregnant in high school and then was ditched by a boy who’d rather risk getting shot than marry her.
Frantic, Sis spaded the dirt back into the hole, telling herself after the wedding was soon enough to report this. Besides, she’d more than likely uncovered a relic, one of those Civil War casualties whose body had never been found.
She tamped the dirt carefully back into place, and then with one last glance to make sure the bones didn’t show, she stowed her spade, pulled off her gloves and went into the house.
“Lord God,” Beulah said. “You’re pale as a bar of Ivory soap. If you ain’t careful you’re gonna work you’self into a heatstroke.”
Beulah handed her a glass of water, but the lump of despair in her throat was so big Sis couldn’t swallow a single drop.
“Beaulah, do you know what’s buried under the roses?”
Setting her mouth in a straight line, Beulah turned her back on Sis and began washing dishes.
“More than likely a stray cat. I hope you covered it back up. Ain’t no sense ruining Emily’s wedding.”
“It’s not a cat. It’s a body.”
Beulah headed toward the table, a freight train gaining steam.
“You hear me good now, chile. Let it alone.”
Sis nodded or maybe she said yes through a throat so parched words got caught and couldn’t find their way out. A whole set of possibilities swirled through her mind, all of them tragic. If she could ever break free of Biloxi, she was going somewhere so frozen it wouldn’t grow a single rosebush. She’d find a place with snow so deep she’d need an Alaskan husky to find buried bones.
“I want you to go on down to the café and forget about them rosesbushes. You hear me now, Sis?”
“Loud and clear.”
“No use upsetting Emily and Jim, either. Just tell her to hold off on them German chocolate cakes. I aim to stay home and show Jim what he’s got instead of what he’s lost.”
Sis understood the things Beulah left unsaid, her comprehension so perfect she wondered if she’d ever had a normal life in the little pink Victorian house by the sea or if she’d only imagined it.
Beulah leaned down and folded her into a voluminous hug.
“Don’t you worry none. Everything’s gonna be all right, sugar pie.”
For a moment the thought of bones vanished, and Sis allowed herself to sink so deep into Beulah’s endearment she became a little girl again with her whole life in front of her, a shining path she could follow to the stars.
WHEN SIS LEFT THE KITCHEN she could hear Sweet Mama down